Letzgo Hunting and the dangers of paedophile vigilantism

This group has passed details of seven alleged paedophiles to police. But there are better ways of targeting child abuse

Police search hills near Machynlleth for missing April Jones. 'I was not alone in detecting a sense that for some of those who had volunteered, it was a belief that they could do a better job of the searching than the police themselves.' Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

There are a number of lenses through which to view the activities of Letzgo Hunting – the group of six mums and dads, led by "Scumm Buster" – who have seemingly helped police to arrest seven paedophiles, who had allegedly been attempting to groom children online and then arranging to meet them. Instead of meeting an underage child, the alleged paedophile met with Scumm Buster and his (I am presuming that this is indeed a man) associates, who had been posing as children online, and who were now armed with accusations, a "dossier of evidence" and a video camera.

These seven arrests might just be the tip of the iceberg, for Letzgo Hunting have suggested that they have evidence against another 35 alleged paedophiles, who have similarly fallen for this type of sting operation.

So, quite clearly our first lens here is vigilantism – members of the public deciding that "enough is enough" or, as Scumm Buster claims, "we want to protect children" and, crucially, simply not believing that the police are capable of acting as effectively as they can. It is here that this lens becomes more opaque. After all, first in the queue to criticise Letzgo Hunting have been the police themselves, who have pointed out that activities such as this can work against gaining a conviction at court and, notably, all seven of those arrested have been given police bail, rather than being remanded in custody.

In some senses you might suggest that the police would react like this, especially when faced with the activities of a citizens' group that would seem to be generating better results than they are. However, perhaps the bigger questions for the formal agents of law and order relate to why the public seem to have fallen out of love with our "boys in blue".

The disappearance of April Jones is another case in point when, quite apart from the extraordinary efforts of the people of Machynlleth themselves, hundreds of volunteers from all over the country, united through social media, descended on the Welsh town to offer their services. These vigilante search parties had to be found accommodation, fed, watered, managed and co-ordinated. Perhaps their support was a simple form of altruism, but I was not alone in detecting a sense that for some of those who had volunteered, it was a belief that they could do a better job of the searching than the police themselves. To date April has never been found.

The second lens is children and that space in time that we call childhood. The adult world covets and wants to colonise that space, whether it be the music that our children listen to, the films that they watch, or the clothes that they wear. Letzgo Hunting clearly wants to do something to protect children and there's nothing wrong with that, but all too often the adult world's interest in children merely serves to render childhood more problematic. Of course, we can all say that we do not want our, or anyone's else's child, to be sexually groomed for adult entertainment but how do you account for the corporate paedophilia that sees young (male) models standing outside the doors of upmarket, American clothing chains, stripped to their waists posing as a marketing ploy, or young girls being offered breast implants for their 15th birthdays? Is that not sexually grooming children too, even if we all seem far more prepared to collude with that process?

The final lens is paedophilia itself. I have worked with hundreds of convicted paedophiles – the majority of whom were "predatory" and who deliberately targeted and abused children who were strangers to them, but also with a significant minority who abused members of their own extended families, sometimes over two generations. The activities of Letzgo Hunting cannot catch this latter group and would seem to deny a criminological truth that the majority of children are not groomed and abused by strangers – the old notion of "stranger danger" was always unhelpful – but by fathers, mothers, brothers, uncles, aunts and grandparents. Where's the vigilante action dealing with intra-familial sexual abuse of children, or even an acknowledgement that our mental picture of a paedophile remains stuck with the dirty, old man in a raincoat – which now hides his laptop, rather than with the "normal" dad or granddad?

I worry too that in relation to reducing the overall sexual abuse of our children the activities of Letzgo Hunting, which will inevitably grab headlines and attention, are but a drop in the ocean of the work that can be done with paedophiles to stop them abusing. I wish instead of online stings, that Scumm Buster and his friends had volunteered for Circles UK, whose work is based on the extraordinarily successful Canadian initiative Circles of Support and Accountability, which can truly reduce the number of child victims of sexual abuse. Their work isn't as glamorous as pretending to be children to lure an alleged paedophile and then videoing the encounter in a pub car park, but it has been shown to reduce the levels of child sexual abuse by predatory paedophiles by as much as a half in an evaluation by Dr Robin Wilson of the first 50 circles in Canada. I await the results of the trials of the seven people arrested with interest.

Let me end with a warning. The work of Letzgo Hunting was clearly inspired by the US series To Catch a Predator, which aired on NBC between November 2004 and December 2007 and which was presented by Chris Hansen. A few years after the show finished, Hansen himself was caught on a hidden camera cheating on his wife. Sometimes those who live by the video camera also have their careers ended in the same way.